Drowning lessons
by AWterDever
Summary: What if Lisanna never went to Edolas? What if our little snow-white fell right into the Age of Sail, and decided to become a pirate? Rated T for a bit mature context. I don't own the cover image. —First story on here, guys, so please be nice.
1. On the sea we sail

I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters.

T/N - Lisanna = Lou.

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><p>The person who once was Lisanna Strauss wakes up when the ship cringes and her cot swings into the wall, and as she opens her eyes, the big room full of other awakening men spins.<p>

The white-haired girl gets down to the floor, and she quickly tightens her belt around her hips so her pants won't fall down, it takes her almost two minutes to assure herself that she haven't lost her knife, her shirt is uncomfortable and itches. But she doesn't really care anymore. Two years on the sea does that to you.

"Good morning Lou" someone says to her and she grunts a "you too, John" over her shoulder.

She has to shove her way up to the deck, as there are several tired men trying to climb the narrow ladder and Lisanna's in a hurry to get out to the fresh air. She hates to sleep inside the forecastle but there's no other place.

As Lisanna gets out from the forecastle she can feel her stomach rumble. So she goes to the galley where she knows someone will give her a bit food if she looks hungry enough, and Ren hands her a piece of bread and a mug water when she asks. Lisanna gives him a thankful nod, before she takes her first bite of the bread, and then she almost chokes. The bread is as dry as sand, and Lisanna has to drink the water in order to get it down, and the water's warm and Lisanna swallows something that she's pretty sure was a fly. But she's gotten used to warm water now, in the same way she's used to waking up at dawn, hiding her breasts and smelling like a rat. She's just used to it.

While she eats she talks with Ren for a some minutes, the dark-skinned man is really kind, though a little to optimistic sometimes. But today he seems to be feeling blue, and Lisanna asks him if there's something on his mind, and apparently he misses his fiancé. He shows her a small carving in a floorboard; _"Karen Lilica, my love, my life, where are thou?"_ Lisanna is a bit impressed, she hasn't met any sailor who knew how to spell any other words than _my _or _mine. _

Even though she's impressed with his spelling, Lisanna don't pity him at all, she's seen enough of him trying to get into a girls bed when the crew visits a town, she pats him on the back though.

"When are you going to find a girl, Lou?" Ren suddenly asks, and she startles, because the question is sudden and unwelcome. And then she gives him a shrug, and Ren lifts one of his thin eyebrows. "There must be someone, right? At home?" he pushes on, and Lisanna can feel her cheeks go red. Her thoughts circle around lots of girls, one with flaming red hair, another who almost lived in libraries, and one with brown hair who could drink three barrels filled with alcohol in an hour. And then she thinks of a girl with the same white shade of hair, who always was angry and loved to pick up fights. And then she looks at Ren, "no, there was none who found my interest" she says to him. But there was girls who she loved as sisters, beautiful girls who all fought demons they did not deserve.

Ren doesn't need to know that, though.

.

Even though Lisanna, (_Lou, never Lisanna, Lisanna's gone, dead, her brother killed her, you're Lou, forever Lou)_ has become used to the life as a sailor, she'll always miss the life as a mage. She will forever miss her siblings and she will never wake up one morning without wondering how they are. If they are still the famous Strauss siblings. She will forever wonder if they still miss her.

Lisanna wants them to be happy, like _really really_ happy, she wants them to get over their loss of the third part or their trio, but somewhere deep inside, she doesn't want them to be _too _happy. Because if they are happy, will they still remember their sister? The small girl who loved her dresses and pretty shoes.

Sometimes Lisanna can't sleep, when she catches herself tracing her left shoulder there it should be a red mark, or when she sometimes hears herself humming the song that her sister would put her to sleep with, or sometimes she just see fire and suddenly expect to hear a booming laugh behind her. Sometimes she even turns around, only to see the blue and green sea.

.

The sea. So big and so terrifying. When Lisanna still were little Lisanna Strauss, clad in dresses and pretty shoes, and not Lou from India. She had never seen the sea, the sea was something dangerous. At least that's what Mirajane had told her, on a day when Lisanna wanted to follow her sister to one of her countless missions.

"Don't you ever go to the sea, because if you get on to one of the ships, you'll fall down in the water, and I can't always save you, you know" she had said, then she had ruffled Lisanna's white hair, and then she had turned around and left.

Sometimes Lisanna chuckles at the memory, because the all-knowing Mirajane never thought her small, fragile sister would end up on a ship bigger than the house they were born in, with her hair almost grey after months of not washing it, talking like a grown man with too much to drink. But of course, Mirajane never thought that her own brother would one day "kill" her baby sister.

There was many things that Mirajane never considered, especially that the biggest pedophile in Magnolia would ever be her baby sister's captain, and that her baby sister gets daily compliments that she smells lovely and would do good as a men prostitute. Something that Lisanna didn't even know existed, before Hibiki had so nicely told her about it and how they found out their last captain was one. And how they politely killed him for _his own good_. Lisanna had never really liked Hibiki before, but now she's just scared. People shouldn't be able to speak about killing people like it's their newest favorite food.

.

Lisanna hates to swab the deck. Her arms hurt and the morning is cold as hell, as Eve so nicely put it. She's used to the warmer weather in India and the British fall is not welcome on her agenda.

Eve throws a bucket filled with water, and a lot of the ice cold liquid splashes up in Lisanna's face. And she screams in suprise as small stones hit her nose.

"You scream like a girl, little guy" The short man says, and Lisanna is too cold to remind him that they're the same height.

"Shut up" she says instead. And Eve chuckles before throwing another bucket filled with the damned water, this time he's truly aiming at her.

"Just as a girl" he mutters. And he smiles a cold smile with his eyes trained on her. Lisanna shudders.

.

The Blue Pegasus is _huge. _Even for a galleon. Four masts and three decks. Before leaving Earthland and the life as a mage the biggest boat Lisanna had ever been on was a skiff she and Natsu had used on a mission. And the only thing Lisanna can remember from that trip was how scared she were of falling into the water and how green Natsu had been after only minutes.

Lisanna is stretching her back as she stares at the men up in the rigging, the men in the main-mast is at least sixty feet over the ground. Lisanna hates to rig the sails, even though she loved to fly higher than trees when she still was a mage and could turn into different animals. It's just different, when she knows she can fall anytime and no one really would miss her. They would just remember her as the boy with the really light hair.

The sun is almost up, and she can feel the warmth from it hitting her back. She leans back and hear her back pop, a satisfying sound. She smiles for the first time in a week. Life could be better, but it could also be at lot _worse_.

"Lou!" she suddenly hears a voice behind her and then something hits the back of her head, and she turns around. Just in time to see the fore boom coming towards her in ultra speed. Lisanna shouts something inaudible, and then she hear several shouts around her. And then the boom hits her, and she falls to the ground. The back of her head hits something hard, and the world turns black for several seconds.

.

"Ye ok?" someone asks over LIsanna. And she slowly opens her eyes, the world is spinning around her again. Colors and sunlight mixing with each other, and then slowly, the spinning slows down and then she's staring straight at Dan's giant grin. And Lisanna kind of hates him because her head is pounding and her back lies against a stack of ropes and her body's bent into an uncomfortable angle and Dan The Idiot doesn't realize that he should help her up and is instead grinning like an idiot. And then Lisanna remembers that she has posed as a man for years now and it's actually okay to hit someone to express their feelings towards someone instead of giving people angry gazes. Like all girls are taught to do.

So Lisanna hits him, hard. Because she's learned the hard way that that's the proper treatment to a man she finds annoying. And not at all violent. At least not in a sailors mind.

Dan's face jerks back after Lisanna's fist connects with his face, and then it's the right time to tell him what she wants him to do. "Help me the fuck up and quit staring!" She growls at him. And Dan almost explodes in laughter before he gives her a hand. And Lisanna grabs it a bit harder than necessary and lets him pull her up to a standing position.

"who let go off the boom?" Lisanna shouts to the men around her, and they all look at Dan. And Lisanna also looks at Dan, and Dan flushes a bright red and then Lisanna narrows her eyes into small strings. Then she closes her eyes, counts to ten in her mind, and then utters the first word that she finds appealing;

"Idiot"

.

After all, people still look at her like she's just a small boy, and Dan is still her best friend. But now she's got a bump on the back of her head and she has an annoying headache. And of course she's soaked from bottom to top, thanks to a nasty wave.

Lisanna almost wants to shout out her frustration, but the sun has just beginned to show up and if she were to shout now. Well, she would be brutally murdered by at least forty tired and angry men. If they were being nice to her.

It's been three years since she came to Earth, two years and six months since she joined the navy. And now Lisanna's pretty much used to this new and scary world.

And as she looks down from the mainmast's roundhouse, she sees a sea-gull. And then she knows that the Blue Pegasus is just days from land.

Lisanna may like the life on boats, but she needs a bath, and she has always liked dresses. She smiles a genuine smile, giving herself wrinkles around her blue eyes. And in her mind she hears the clinging of coins.

"Wassup, London?" she whispers, "Lisanna's in the house"

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><p>Okay, three days of my life. I've learned a shit ton about boats, I kinda want to cry.<p>

I want critical reviews, so please give me a hint if you like this story. I'm kinda nervous right now as this is my first story here and I've put pretty much time into it and it's the first chapter.

galleon - the boat that often was used as cargo-ship.

forecastle - where the sailors slept

galley - the kitchen on a ship

roundhouse - outlook tower


	2. Meeting with the mom

I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters.

Notes—

a) In this fanfic, people in Earthland spoke English, so Lisanna didn't come to India speaking Japanese. If you thought so.

b)THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS GUYS!

c) please leave a review if you wonder something or can see a mistake in this fic. Or if you just want to leave one.

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><p>Hours before the Blue Pegasus reaches London, Lisanna wakes up at dawn, eats a bit hardtack, finds a giant worm inside her food and gives it to John. And then she gets to help Dan with repairing a part of the railing. Dan accidentally drops a big plank on Lisanna's hand and she shouts a little too high. Bert and Bart, who's just passing by, laughs at her. Eve looks at her with his cold eyes, Hibiki smirks. Lisanna shudders.<p>

It's almost noon when Dan suddenly stops talking about how happy his sister will be when they get home, as he stands up and looks around. Then he drags Lisanna to her feet, and screams "England!" as high as he can.

And Lisanna looks the way Dan's looking, and she sees nothing. Only sea.

"What are you tal—" she begin, but Bert and Bart cut her off by shouting the same thing as Dan did just a moment ago; Bart even throws his hat to the sky, and it falls into the sea. He doesn't even twitch. He's so happy to see something that's not there.

"Bad eyesight you've got there" Bert says, and when Lisanna gives him an angry look he chuckles, "you've gotta be blind not to see it" and he points at a small point in the horizon. And when Lisanna squints, she sees a small green point that's slowly becoming larger.

"If we're lucky we'll get there before sunset, and then it'll take some hours to unload. And then we'll actually be home" Dan says, and Lisanna let's out a deep sigh. Because a bath is waiting for her, it has been ever since she left India, as she couldn't bath together with the men without blowing her cover. And she'll get a new shirt, after the bath. She decides, as she's been repairing her clothes during the nights so no one will see the suspicious bandages around her chest or ask her why she doesn't have a penis.

.

Lisanna has read many books with women posing as men, but she has never ever read a book where the woman has problems with hiding her periods. And she kinda wishes she had asked Levy about it when she still lived in Magnolia. Because it is hard as hell, and Lisanna is pretty proud of herself as there is absolutely no privacy on the toilet, or as the others calls it; the Privy Gallery.

And the other problem; changing clothes, she sometimes had to skip a meal or wait until everyone was asleep so she could change her shirt as Ichiya sometimes complained about the smell, and pants were almost impossible, and she only had one pair, so Lisanna has been using the same pants for two years, and they are stiff off both saltwater and blood. Goddamn period, Lisanna hates it, and it's not like she's planning a pregnancy anyway.

.

They are incredible lucky, as the sun is still high on the sky when the Blue Pegasus reaches the Pool of London. And there are ships everywhere. Skiffs, frigates, galleons, sloops, Lisanna don't know what to call the others as she had no contact with the big blue at all until three years ago.

For Lisanna, most of the unloading passes as in a haze. She helps the others with barrels filled with salt and other spices. Helps to carry out chests filled with fabrics.  
>But her mind's concentrated on letting the idea in, she's in London. The place she has heard thousand of things about from all the men on the Pegasus. Where dinner only costs a shilling and were the women are as beautiful as diamonds. Well, Lisanna don't really know what she should do with that information, but if she ever would turn homosexual. She should probably visit London.<p>

And then, when the sun is soon gone and the world bathes in a red glow, they're done. And Lisanna gets her promised pay, which isn't much. And then she's suddenly a small boy in a too big city. And she suddenly feels scared, with her money in her hands and with only a knife to defend her with.

"Come on Lou, we don't want to be too late" Dan says behind her, and Lisanna turns to look at him. His red hair that always seems to darken when exposed to the sun for too long, and his eyes with the weird color Dan states is magenta. She hugs him, hard.

Dan takes a step back to regain his balance and chuckles awkwardly, because if there's one thing sailors will _never_ learn on the sea; how to take car of an emotionally unstable boy. He pats Lisanna's back, though. And then Lisanna steps out from the "embrace" and looks at her best friend. "Thank you, Dan" she says slowly, carefully, resisting her voice to break. And then it does, and she feels her eyes beginning to tear up, she gets out a pair of "thank you, thank you, thank you!" before she completely breaks down. Sobbing with an open mouth, so all the disgusting sounds gets out.

"No, no, no!" Dan pleads, "stop crying, hey, come one, stop it!" he pulls her small body into an embrace again, and Lisanna puts her arms against the man's waist and presses her face against the stiff fabric of Dan's shirt. She clings to him like a small monkey baby as she sobs in a way she hasn't done since she was just a small child.

"But..." and then Dan begins to hum, and she presses her cheek against his chest harder, hiding inside the safety of her best friend's arms. _  
><em>

"Come on, Lou, you've got nothing to thank me for" Dan says when he feels the place where Lisanna's face is pressed to his chest beginning to dampen, "we're friends, right?"

Lisanna looks up at him, with her face red and swollen and with indents from Dan's shirt on her cheek. "yeah, we're friends, Dan, best friends" she says. And then she laughs, loud and with a completely too high voice for a boy. But Dan doesn't remark that, they're friends after all.

.

The walk too Dan's family home is silent and awkward. And the only time they speak too each other is when Dan points out a house and says something like "there's the house that Maria lived in, she was the one who looked after me and my siblings when my mother were working late" or "there's the tree that I fell from when I was five, mother said that I almost died"

Lisanna listens, and try to remember the words as much as she can, because if you're in an unknown city it's important to know where the things are.

They walk and walk and walk. And Lisanna's eyes and ears are working overtime as she almost drowns in all the details of the city. The men and women walking fast down the streets, the low voices from the dark alleys, the music coming from one of the countless pubs.  
>Lisanna's been in many cities just like this one, but it has never felt like this, because even though it smells like piss and the ground is muddy and her shoes stick to it like glue, she likes the place. Because Dan knows where they are. And Lisanna trusts Dan.<p>

And if Dan grew up in this place without coming out as a broken soul, Lisanna's pretty sure she'll get out in a pretty good state, too.

.

The sun has been gone for a really long time, and it's completely dark, Lisanna's holding onto Dan's belt so she won't lose him in the darkness, and then Dan says "we're here" as he stares at two houses.

"which one?" she asks, as she looks at the two houses they're standing in front of; the one on the right is a pub where laughs and false singing can be heard from. And the other is a hovel, with the small windows boarded up, with no door and some of the planks are gone from the outside.

Dan chuckles, and then he takes Lisannas arm and leads her to a small stairway on the pubs side. Lisanna trails after him, feeling like a little child, with her heartbeat pounding so loud she's sure Dan can hear. She's actually going to meet the fantastic mother Dan has spent nights with telling her about.

.

"HELLO!" Dan shouts as he opens the door on top of the stairway. And Lisanna can hear someone dropping a glass, or a plate, or just something fragile, she will probably never know what it was.

They hear a lot of swearing, and then a big-busted woman with dark hair standing up at every angle comes out, clad in a bright red dress and barefoot. The woman has a towel in her arms. But when she sees Dan standing there, crouching so not hit his head on the ceiling, she drops it and runs towards him. And for the second time today, and the first in months, Dan gets hugged by a woman. Though this hug is much more loving than when Dan tried to get his best friend to stop sobbing like a child.

It takes almost two minutes before Dan's mother lets him go, and then she looks straight at Lisanna. "Who are you?" she asks, and her eyes are suddenly a little bit cold and a little bit angry and Lisanna can feel herself shrink. She gulps, as she opens her mouth to answer and—"This is my best friend, Lou, we picked him up in India" Dan says, a little too resolute, and when Lisanna looks at him she sees him giving his mother a look. And her cheek flushes a nice red color that totally clashes with her hair.

"Okay" Dan's mother says, after ending the staring contest with her son, she picks up the towel from the floor, and then she holds out her hand so she and Lisanna can shake hands. "You can call me Babbie" Babbie says, and then she smiles, and Lisanna quickly decides that Babbie is the most beautiful woman she's ever met.

As they stop shaking hands, Babbie grabs Lisanna and puts her face in the crook of her neck. She sniffs, twice. "You need a bath, I'll go warm the water" she then says.

And that's how Lisanna and Dan's mother Babbie became friends.

.

The water's warm, and Lisanna is happy. And bent into an uncomfortable position, as the dolly tub she's bathing in is really small and she's actually just hugging her knees in a small bathtub filled with dirty water.  
>The water was probably clear once, but after Lisanna sat down in it, it instantly became grey. And that was before she even began to wash her hair.<p>

Babbie gave her a scrub brush to clean her skin and get all the dirt that Lisanna believed was permanent. So she does, and it hurts as hell, because the dirt is stuck on her body. And Lisanna almost gives up, before she becomes angry at herself for being weak-minded. And then she scrubs even harder.  
>It ends with Lisanna sitting and almost crying in a bathtub with grey water, her skin an unhealthy red. And a stinging feeling in her whole body.<p>

Then she remembers her hair. And she almost begins to cry again.  
>There's no shampoo or soap to help her out, so Lisanna takes the hard decision to step out of the dolly tub and then she just dips her hair in the tub and begins to scrub it. Too.<p>

Her hair actually becomes clean, and her hair color begins to shift from grey to white in only minutes. Though by that time the water is cold and Lisanna is even colder. So she decides that her hair will have to live its own life from now on and that if her hair wants to be clean it has to do it itself.

Babbie gave her clothes before she went into the bath, they're Dan's brothers old ones. Lisanna tries them on, and feels really short when the sleeves are far too long and the pants are far too big, she skip to take on her boots. As they are wet and disgusting. And then she opens the door, and smells a heavenly smell. _Food._

.

Lisanna steps out of the small room filled with cleaning stuff. And takes her first step to a dinner she will probably remember for a while. And unknowingly, she also steps out to a new life.

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><p>This chapter is probably pretty boring, as the only stuff Lisanna's actually doing is bathing and crying and talking to Dan's mother. But I promise there will be more action in the next chapter.<p>

Spoiler - dinners with peoples family's are always a bit embarrassing

Please give me a review if you see something weird or if there's something you're wondering.

Peace out /Marvxles


	3. The piano girl

Notes - a) To **AirBorne3: **I typed wrong, I promise! Even though I'm pretty sure he knows, Lisanna is not a good liar. Or that's at least what I think.

b) oh my god, I failed, I've changed it now, and sorry, again, **AirBorne3**

c) Babbie- short for Barbara

**_I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters._**

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><p>The small dining room smells like one of the expensive restaurants in Magnolia, or heaven. Or maybe both.<p>

Dan's sitting in a chair by the dinner table with his back to her, and Babbie is leaning over him, cutting his food.

"Mother! I can do it myself!" Dan whines, and Babbie hits him on the back of his head with an arm that seems to come out from nowhere. "No, I'll do it for you, Daniel!"

A boy two or three years younger than Lisanna, who sits across the table, laughs at Dan and Lisanna can't see what Dan does as his back is against her but he earns a second hit on his head from Babbie.

"Who's that?" a girl with braids the same color as her mother asks as she points at Lisanna, and Lisanna stands a little more upright as the kids stare at her.

"umm, I'm Li—Lou" Phew, saved, "I come from India" she says, and when Dan looks at her with a lifted eyebrow, she avoids his gaze.

"LiLo?" The girl asks, and Lisanna almost gets a panic attack. "No!" she shouts. And the family in front of her all raises an eyebrow, seems like its a family trait. "It's...My name's Lou, just Lou" she stammers, and then Babbie claps her hands and tells her to sit down. Lisanna takes the chair next to the girl with braids. With a closer look on her, she sees that the girl's nose is not so different from a dogs, weird.

"I'm Coco!" the girl squeals a little too high, and Lisanna winces. Her poor poor ears.

"And I'm Hugh" The boy says, and Lisanna frowns, both of the names feels familiar in some way. Like she used to know them, but this is the first time they meet. Right?

.

The stew is delicious, a long time ago Lisanna hated cooked vegetables. But after weeks with only hardtack to keep her full, the soft carrots and potatoes are ia delicacy. And though the meat is a bit tasteless and leathery, its delicious. And for once, the drinking water's cold, not lukewarm, cold. She drinks at least four glasses of the perfect liquid before Hugh even finishes his first.

Nothing really happens during the dinner, everyone's silent, the only sound Lisanna can hear is chewing and low music coming from the pub under them. And then Babbie orders Lisanna another portion stew, and Lisanna reaches out her hand so Babbie can pour up more of the delicious food. And Hugh looks up, and sees a red button on Lisanna's sleeve.

"Is that _my _shirt?" he exclaims, and Lisanna flushes a bright red. "Well—" she begins, but Babbie cuts her off, "Hugh, don't be rude. I threw away Lou's clothes, I found some... stains" she says. And Lisanna remembers months of bleeding in her pants. Damn it.

"What stains?" Coco asks, and Dan leans forward on his elbows. "yeah," he says, "what stains, Lou?"

Lisanna avoids both their gazes, "uuhh..." she mumbles, and once again, Babbie saves her; "Don't tease out guest" she says with a voice filled with steel. Coco returns to her stew, but Lisanna can feel Dan's gaze on her. She doesn't look up from her plate for the rest of the dinner.

.

After dinner, Lou's assigned a bed in a small closet. And after Babbie helps her with making the bed, its tea time.

They sit around the same table as they did during dinner, slowly sipping on their tea. Lisanna takes as small sips as possible, she never learned to drink tea without milk and sugar in it. At the Straight's home they offers none.  
>They don't talk much, again, it's just Dan telling his mother what they've seen in India, and Hugh teasing his sister. Lisanna is quiet like a mouse.<p>

"I didn't know they let sailors wear wigs" Hugh comments when Lisanna runs a hand trough her now dry hair, and she looks at him, not knowing if he's going to get angry again.

"They don't" she responds, "this is my real hair".

And in less than two seconds later there's two persons hands in her hair. Stroking it and patting it and pulling in it, "ouch!" she exclaims.

"sorry" Coco says, and she stops pulling at a chunk of hair, but Hugh is still holding a strand of hair between his fingers. "I've never met someone with white hair" he mutters, "and it's so silky".

"And fluffy!" Coco adds loudly. Lisanna pursues her lips, when she was just a small kid a pair of children used to bully her because of her hair. After that she was always a bit unsure of it, and she hasn't really done anything with it since she left India two years ago, and it's not in the best shape. She'll have to cut it soon.

"You've got really girly hair, Lou" Hugh says and later adds "amazing", and Lisanna's eyes widen. She knows she's the worst liar north of Africa, but if people finds out her secret after just four hours, she really are the worst liar in the world.  
>As she thinks that, she remembers the time when Levy tried to make an actor of Cana, but that it just ended with the producer laying unconscious in the middle of a sea of puke Cana had left behind and Gray and Natsu destroying the camera. Cana hadn't talked to Levy for two weeks afterwards. She almost smiles at the memory.<p>

"Funny that you say that, once a guy tried to get me into his bed after I accidentally tripped over him" She says, and it's actually the truth, though the man thought that Lisanna was Mirajane and actually just wanted to have sex with a celebrity.

Hugh laughs, Babbie swats him on the back of his head, Coco looks confused, and Dan. Well, Dan just looks thoughtful. A look Lisanna never seen him with, it doesn't fit his reputation of optimistic idiot. She feels the tea coming up her throat, and she swallows nervously. "I, I think I'm going to bed now, it was years since I slept in a bed" she hurriedly says. And then she rushes from the table.

.

The best thing with having the small room is that Lisanna can take off the bandages that hides her breasts. They are dirty and the edges are brown of dried blood. Her chest is even worse, her breasts are sore and there's red and blue bruises everywhere. Lisanna winces, she's become so used to the chest pains that she never really thought of them. But now it hurts like hell and she tries to move as little as possible.

She doesn't really need to be discrete, as she's alone in her room, but Lisanna still sleeps with her(Hugh's) shirt on. It's a reflex.

.

She can't fall asleep. She just twist and turns on the small bed. It should probably feel like the best thing in the world to actually sleep on a real bed. But Lisanna actually misses how she would slowly swing. And how John, who slept in the hammock next to her, would quietly snore. And how she could hear the water when it hit the ship's side.

In the bed, Lisanna can't not be scared of falling down to the ground, even though she would just fall around then inches. So he grips the edges and hopes on the best.

Eventually, she drifts off to a restless sleep.

.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, she needs to pee. So she searches under the bed, and of course, she finds a pot that she knows the use of.

It's times like this, when Lisanna squats over a pot made of china in the middle of the night, that she misses Earthland. Like misses so much that it hurts in her stomach. She misses the toilets and the food and the showers and the beds and the sugar and milk in tea and goddamnit, she misses her real identity so much. She misses the person who once had the loudest laugh and who could cheer up anyone with just a few words, the girl with the pretty shoes and the short hair. Who loved rain but hated mud, who cats sometimes followed as they thought she smelled like them. The girl with the ability to change into an animal.

Lisanna buries her head in the thin pillow and cries.

.

It's not the sun that wakes her, it's the girl with braids. It takes Lisanna two minutes to remember the girl's name was Coco.

"What are you doing?" she groans, just as two small hands presses against her chest.

"Mother was right!" Coco squeals, "you were a girl!"

Suddenly Lisanna is wide awake, she takes her pillow and hits Coco, square in the face. "I. am. not. a. girl!" she shouts, and her voice is as usual too high for a boy's. And Coco shouts "You are!" back.

Then Babbie opens the door, and she's wearing such a grave look on her face Lisanna becomes worried that someone has died.

But then the busty woman opens her mouth; "Lou, why are you, a girl, working as a sailor?" and her voice is even more serious than her face. Lisanna wonders if she'll faint soon.

"Eh, I kind of... got into some trouble in India, and the easiest way was to get on board the Pegasus." she says, because even though she doesn't know Babbie very well, she knows that if you lie to her, you'll end up as a corpse twenty years to early. And Lisanna's pretty keen on living, thank you very much.

Babbie just sighs, "youths nowadays" she says, and Lisanna blushes.

.

Dan is out of London, visiting some friends. So Lisanna follows Coco and Babbie to the pub downstairs, where Babbie works as a barmaid. Coco gives her one of her skirts, then she leaves, she'll visit some friends she says.

It feels weird for Lisanna to once again wear a skirt, like, there's no thing that chafes between her thighs. And when Babbie drags a brush trough her hair and braids it, she feels like she's a girl again.

One hour after Coco woke her up, Lisanna's walking down the stairs, behind Babbie. Clad in a new shirt that fits her frame, without bandages for once, and a skirt that just reaches her knees. She also has a red flower in her hair.

"Babbie" she quietly says, and the busty woman doesn't turn around, but her shoulders stiffens, so Lisanna continues, "you won't tell Dan, right?" she pleads. And Babbie turns around, takes Lisanna's hand in hers, and squeezes it. "No, of course not"

.

Her arms are tired and her feet hurts. But Lisanna knows how to fake a smile, and she knows how to serve drinks, and she knows that Babbie will give her food when the night is over. So she doesn't complain.

She has worked for around four hours, there's not many men in the pub, not more than a dozen. But they are all frequent drinkers. So she has to carry out tray after tray. Sway her hips a special way, lean forward a little too far and a little too long. She has to do all the right things.

Around thirty minutes ago, Babbie left her when it came out that an important ship had come to London. She had said something about different spices she needed to buy. She would come back soon, she had also said.

She's all alone in the bar now, except for the dozen men and the girl playing piano. The girl is sitting so the only thing Lisanna can see off her is her hands. Long pale fingers moving over the tangents, it's a slow song. And Lisanna stomps her bare foot against the floor in the same rhythm as the melody as she waits for a man to give her a shilling.

The door opens, and Lisanna stands up from her leaning over a man in his fifties. She looks at the door and sees Coco, the girl's bloody and she sports a black eye.

"Coco!" Lisanna exclaims, "what happened to you?" she half walks half runs to the bar there she gets a wet napkin. She returns to Coco's side and begins to dab her eye, Coco winces.

"There—" she winces again as Lisanna begins to dab an abrasion on her cheek., "I got kinda overrun by a herd of men" wince. "they say that Kraken destroyed a ship" wince.

Lisanna frowns, "there is no such thing" she says, and Coco's eyes widen. "of course there is!" she shouts. And Lisanna presses the napkin a little too hard against the girl's cheek, Coco backs away. "But I've seen it!" she sputters.

Lisanna can hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, "then you've must have seen wrong" she breathes. And then she feels a hand on her arm, she turns around.

"Miss, the girl's not wrong" it's an old man in his sixties, stinking of alcohol, Lisanna can't remember serving him. So he must have come in after Coco.  
>"of course she is, there's no Kraken!" she exclaims, and in the corner of her eye she can see Coco rolling her eyes and giving the piano girl a look.<p>

"Miss, you've must have heard the—" the old man continues, but Lisanna cuts him off "don't 'miss' me, I've heard the legends, and you must be an idiot to believe them!" she screams.

Suddenly Babbie's there, putting a hand on her lower back, "Lou," she begins, but Lisanna doesn't listen. "no!" she cries. The old man grips her arm, and Lisanna tries to hit him.

.

It ends with someone hitting her in the head with a chair. A terrible end off the conversation.

.

Lisanna wakes up in the back of the pub, with the same napkin she used to dab Coco's bruises with on her forehead. She throws it away.

Her head hurts and she feels the beer she drank before treating to come up

"How are you feeling?" a voice behind her asks, and Lisanna spins around, on a chair in the corner she sees the piano girl. "better" she answers, and the piano girl nods.  
>"You sounded pretty crazy out there," the piano boy says with a chuckle, and Lisanna frowns. Who is she to tell her that <em>she's <em>the crazy one when the girl herself is sitting in a corner, hiding her face behind her pink locks.

"huh" Lisanna says, "you're looking pretty creepy yourself"

"I do?" the piano girl asks, and her voice is familiar. Too familiar. But it shouldn't be, this is the first time Lisanna's in this club. This is the first goddamn time in London for her, for god's sake!

Lisanna takes a step towards the corner, she needs to see the girl's face. At the same time, the piano girl stands up from her chair.

One step at a time, they slowly crosses the room, Lisanna feels sweat running down her back, the only part she can see of the piano girl's face is her mouth. It's painted red, and then all pieces fall into place. She reaches her arm up to the girl's hair, "But, you're..."

The door opens, and Babbie's standing there with a glass of water. "Are you feeling better?" she asks. And Lisanna steps away from the girl. "yeah" she answers, "I'm fine now"

She walks out the door, leaving the piano girl behind. She has to get out, she has to get away.

* * *

><p>Soo what did you think? Leave a review if you wonder something or finds something wrong with the text.<p>

Sorry, again, **AirBorne3**


	4. Leaving London

**I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters**

* * *

><p>When running out from the pub Lisanna crashes into Coco. Making the shorter girl fall backwards.<p>

"Oh shit! My bad!" Lisanna calls before she reaches out a hand to help Coco get up. She runs a hand trough her hair as Coco dusts off the back of dress, looking back to see if the piano girl's coming. But she can't see the girl in the pub, there's just a dozen drunk men and one Babbie.

"Where are you going?" Coco asks, as she eyes Lisanna's bump on her forehead. It's red and she's got a trail of dried blood on her temple, "with my skirt?"

Lisanna's hands instantly goes down to the blue fabric that hides her legs, "oh" she says, and then she says nothing more because she just doesn't know what she should answer.

Coco smiles, and puts a hand on Lisanna's shoulder. It's larger than Lisanna's, which is weird. "Don't worry, if you take me on an adventure I wont make you pay"

Lisanna grabs Coco's hand and runs in the direction she thinks the port will be.

.

There's a lot of people in the port, much more than yesterday. But that's because it's daytime and it was almost night when Lisanna was there the last time.

"Where is the best place for information?" She asks a man walking by, and the man points towards a pub. A bit bigger than the others, it's quiet though. So Lisanna and Coco decides to wait for the evening, when all the drunkards and sailors come out.

The two girls sit down on a wharf, with their legs hanging of the edge, at least two meters over the dirty water. They sit in silence, Coco is looking up at the sky, at the seagulls soaring in the sky, and her skins glows in the sun. Lisanna eyes the ships in the port, she sees at least two ships that she's sure is not HMS. The _Young Elephant _and _Oración Seis. _The later one being a giant galleon with a woman all clad in black as a figurehead, Lisanna stares at it for a long time, but the ship's far away from the two girls on the wharf and Lisanna's eyesight isn't actually that good, she promises herself to get a better look at it later. _  
><em>

As Lisanna looks at the ship, she can feel Coco move beside her. And then, the girl with the braids asks; "You're going to leave Dan? Right?", slowly. And Lisanna feels like she's been punched in the throat. Because her plan actually hasn't sunken into her mind. That she's actually leaving London and her best friend behind. Just because she saw a girl she thought she's seen before. And she can hear Dan's voice in her mind; _"what a wimp, right Lou, leaving his best friend behind. What. A. Wimp." _

Okay, he was talking about a rat, but it still feels like Dan's with them, laughing at the idiot who leaves the only person on a planet who actually cares. Well, Lisanna has always been a bit of a bitch.

.

Coco leaves, muttering something about her mother being mad at her if she doesn't get home soon. Lisanna stays, and Coco's words _"if you take me on an adventure" _echoing in her mind. Yeah, what an adventure, sitting on a wharf for two hours.

It's becoming colder as the sun for short periods disappears behind clouds. She crosses her arms around her chest and blowing warm air down her skirt. Hating herself for forgetting her boots in Dan's home. Hating herself for forgetting Dan.

The sun is halfway down when Lisanna stands up and goes into the bar, _Barley Mow_, and it's full of drunk men. What a surprise._  
><em>

"Umm... hello" she says into the air. And no heads turns, and Lisanna feels her face go red.

She quickly decides to use plan B, sadly, she doesn't have one. So she taps one of the barmaids shoulder, and a girl with short blue hair turns around. "Yes?" she asks. And Lisanna swallows, "where is... umm.. the.." she begins, but the barmaid cuts her off, "in the back". Of course, it's no secret that there's two or more pirate ships in the port trying to get people to join their crew.

Lisanna zigzags between tables, sometimes feeling a hand stroke over her butt, or her waist. She ignores them, and the men whistling at her, and the guy who grabs her arm. She ignores them all.

Slowly, like really slowly, she makes her way to a door in the back of the pub, and then she opens the door. And the door's so heavy she drops it and it closes on her shoulder. Damn door.

In the room she's currently in, it's completely dark. And Lisanna can't see anything. So she uses her hands instead, and after waving around with them for a pair two minutes she realizes there's no walls around her, and that she's standing in a big room, not a corridor as she first thought. And then she hears a chuckle not far away from her. And she almost screams. "Who's there?" she says, and her voice sounds frantic, and weak, _(weak, her mind echoes, weak)._

"I'm here" the voice comes from the same place as the chuckle, and then someone lights a torch. And Lisanna's staring at a giant. She screams this time.

"Oh god! Shut up!" The giant man says as he muffles Lisanna's mouth with his large hand. She stops screaming then, and he takes his hand away. He then wipes the saliva from her mouth on Lisanna's shoulder. She pursues her lips in disgust, but she doesn't dare to complain, the man could probably snap her neck with just his hands.

"What are you doing, John, scaring the lady?" A voice reaches her ears, and the giant, John, turns around. Lisanna moves to the side so she can see a slim man with boots that looks so expensive she almost sighs. "No, Cap!" John says, and the slim man, probably the Captain, steps closer to her.

"Who are you?" he asks, and his voice is almost as soft as silk, "beautiful girl" he murmurs under his breath, and then he grabs Lisanna's hand and kisses it. Like way too hard, and way too long, and with _way_ too much tongue. Lisanna pulls her hand away as fast as she can. And the man gives her a cold look. "My lady, what are you doing here?" he asks, and now his voice isn't as soft anymore.

"My name is Lisanna, and I would want to join your crew" Lisanna says stiffly, and she makes sure to use every ounce of professionalism she picked up as a mage when she wanted to make a good impression on one of her employers. She actually reaches out her hand for the man to shake.

Sadly, in the eyes of the pirate captain and the men sitting by a table behind him, Lisanna's just a small girl in a dress to short for her. So the captain doesn't shake her hand, he just stares down at her. "What?" he asks. And Lisanna flushes, this is not going according to the plan. Not. At. All.

"What is a woman doing in here?" someone asks behind her, and Lisanna turns around, just to see another slim man. Just that this one has much wilder hair and has a scar over his eye. "I remember calling after the one with the green dress, not this one"

Lisanna frowns, what's wrong with men and their prostitutes? Okay, for one month where Lisanna was totally new on Earth she also survived as one of the "scums". Lisanna still remember how scared she was. It was like the world lost all it's color and Lisanna felt like she was quickly sinking in the sea. She's still proud of herself of getting out.

"I'm not here to please you!" Lisanna exclaims loudly, "My name is—" "And I don't care" the man says with a bored tone, "please get the girl with the green dress."

.

Lisanna's just about to walk out, maybe go home to Dan again, maybe she'll stop pretending to be a man, maybe she'll take her life. Maybe she'll die, maybe she'll be happy, maybe not. And then she feels a soft hand on her shoulder, much softer than Coco's. "Hello" a dreamy voice whispers in her ear, and then she has a knife against her throat. "What's your name?"

It's a woman's voice, Lisanna realizes, as she feels the other persons body pressing against her back and she can feel wide hips and two round objects that Lisanna knows can't be anything else than breasts.

"Lisanna" she breathes out, just as she feels the knife cut trough the thin skin on her throat, and she feels something wet run down her chest. "Lisanna Strauss"

.

And that is the beginning of Captain Strauss story

* * *

><p>This chapter was a bit shorter. But I wanted to begin with Lisanna's life as a pirate as soon as possible<p> 


	5. Oracion Seis

ntoes:

a) yes, the characters from Fairy Tail is gonna join this story, don't worry.

b) oh god I'm already at the fifth chapter.

**I don't own Fairy Tail**

* * *

><p>Oracion Seis' deck is dirty, like, really really dirty. A man with almost no real teeth left tells Lisanna that someone, (who's probably not alive anymore), accidentally set fire to a part of the deck some weeks before they reached London, and no one cared about cleaning it up. Until Lisanna joined, because as Angel<em>"doesn't want her to fall down from the skies and die" <em>sets her on permanent deck-cleaning duty.

"I don't want to see a single coal spot left when we reach St. Martin." Angel had said with something dark lurking in her eyes, and then she had thrown a metal bucket at Lisanna. (Who didn't cacth it in time and almost fell over board.)

So now, the man with the wild hair, Cobra, who still looks a bit sad after having to part with the woman with the green dress, gives her a scrub. He is the one to throw water on her. And he is better at aiming than Eve. So she quickly ends up soaked and shivering, with blue lips and sickly pale skin. Because it's soon winter and the water's cold. _(And if the Oracion Seis doesn't reach warmer water before November they're pretty dead. Like all of them._)

"God dammit! Faster!" Cobra shouts with his dark voice, and Lisanna scrubs as hard and fast as she can. The coal on the deck has sunken into the deck, and she's just giving herself blisters as she continues on the same spot for twenty minutes. She wonders if she's ever going to finish her seemingly impossible quest.

A boy is looking down at her from one of the masts, blonde hair and slanted blue eyes and a faded glint of mischief in his gaze. The boy's younger than Lisanna, he can't be older than fourteen, he's too thin and his voice too high. Angel said that he had joined them in Jamaica a year and a half ago. One of the hundreds of kids that go to the sea years too early and die years to early.

"he hasn't reached puberty yet" Angel had told her when Lisanna had asked where she should sleep, "I don't think it's dangerous for you to sleep in the same cot."

It was dangerous, Lisanna later thought, as it was already crowded in a cot when there was only one person in it. And even though they weren't as big as the other men, it took a long time to get into a comfortable position. And the only way that actually worked was that the boy slept on top of her, using her breasts as a pillow. Awkward as hell.

.

If you wanted to describe Angel in one word, Lisanna would choose free. Simply because the beautiful woman with the long white hair even lighter than Lisanna's, and eyes so filled with life that they almost shines in the dark. Who dances in the rain and sometimes just screams in pure joy at five in the morning is free as a bird. Because Angel is the angel without wings, who no chains or shackles can make her stay in the same place for a long time.

Angel's laugh is clear and when she's not laughing at a man cowering in fear, Lisanna almost enjoys listening to it. And in the four months they traveled under the same sail, Angel has actually begun to trust Lisanna. Not with her life, but with her coat on a sunny day.

"Catch it!" she shouts from the roundhouse, the sun is in her back, and Lisanna can't see her face. But she knows that the dark brown eyes are sparkling in pure joy, she continues to look at the radiant woman who she sometimes mistakes for a real angel. And it's not until the dark blue coat darkens her line of sight that she remembers it.  
>(of course she doesn't catch it, and the coat falls to the ground with a loud thud, Lisanna prays the Angel doesn't hear it)<p>

_(Sometimes Lisanna wonders if Angel hides something, when her smile falters for a second or when Lisanna catches her staring at the dark water with her eyebrows knitted together in worry,)_

Angel is simply free. With her laugh and her singing and her rain-dances and sun-dances. With her long hair that never gets dirty, or her eyes that sparks of life. She's so fucking free. And Lisanna envies her like no other.

.

"So, why are you here and not on land?" The boy, Sting, asks her one night, with the back of his head lying in the hollow between Lisanna's boobs. And Lisanna stares at the ceiling, as if the it will help her, "I got into some problems in Bombay" she mumbles. And she can feel Sting turning over so he instead of lying on his back lies on his stomach on top of her. "What kind of problems?" he asks, and Lisanna almost slaps him.

"Learn some fucking respect and don't ask a lady about her secrets!" she proclaims with the same voice she used when she taught Natsu to behave like a normal human in those golden childhood days.  
>And then she almost cries, because when Lisanna was just a child there was nothing like the dangerous sea and people who's now gone shouting<em>"don't fucking die on me!" .<em>

Because in those childhood days Lisanna was just a small girl who liked to soar high in the sky with herdamn purple wings or swim with a fucking fish tail. And Lisanna didn't need to believe in magic because she already was a mage. And now, if she told anyone that she once upon a time was a witch... well, people already thought she was crazy.

Of course it wasn't worth a shot, but it was a fun thought. Lisanna muses as she fades into sleep, with a boy five years her junior sleeping on top of her, his face pressed into one of her breasts.

.

The first ship they meet that Angel deems worthy of raiding is called "HMS ELEPHANT". And the beautiful woman shouts on top of her lungs "Raid!" from the roundhouse. And the whole crew runs to the masts to haul the sails.  
>Sting finds Lisanna's hand in the sea of running men, and together they run to the main mast. Where Angel just comes down to the floor, and Lisanna silently gives her a piece of a rope. Angel smiles at her before tying up her hair with the rope.<p>

"Lissie, do you want your gun?" she asks, and Lisanna almost rolls her eyes. As if she actually planned to raid a ship unarmed.

_(She usually has the gun strapped to her waist, but after she almost dropped it into the sea a week ago, Angel confiscated it.)_

Angel throws her the gun, and Lisanna actually catches it this time. She quickly checks if it's loaded. And then she looks up just in time to see Angel skip away, probably to talk with Cobra.

It takes the ELEPHANT twenty minutes to understand that they are chased, and it takes the ship ten more minutes to turn close hauled. By that time, half the crew on Oracion Seis is already down loading the cannons. Sting and Lisanna stands on the poop deck, looking at the giant galleon before them that slowly gets bigger and bigger.

"So, what are we going to do?" Sting suddenly asks, and Lisanna looks down at the younger boy, whose face is turning pale in nervousness. Lisanna suddenly remembers him telling her of how he never has raided a ship before.

"Well, I think we'll fight, and you won't die and I won't either and we're going to be real pirates soon." she says as she ruffles Sting's blonde hair. And he looks up at her with his face filled with fear.

"Oh," the boy says, and Lisanna turns back to look at the HMS ship. And then Sting tugs on her shirt, and she looks back at him. But Sting doesn't say anything this time, and instead they stand in silence. Watching the ship they soon will raid. And then Lisanna remembers;

"Oh right" she says, and Sting looks curiously at her, "don't kill anyone"

Then she walks away, with Sting's curious gaze burning into her back.

.

Even though it's Lisanna's first raid, it's not her first fight. In Earthland she fought against dark wizards and monsters almost every day. And she knows how to shoot with a gun without killing the wrong people or to swing her cutlass without getting murdered in the act. And of course, she knows that Sting fights exactly as ruthlessly as Natsu used to do, so it feels like it's one of the usual fights on a mission, and even though she's in her human form this time. She's not scared, and she dodges bullets and punches, and occasional cannonballs like she used to dodge Natsu's fireballs or Gray's ice.

And just when Lisanna lets out a sigh as the captain on the Elephant raises his hand into the air and the fight is over, she sees Sting standing a bit from her, with his eyes wide in fear and a deep gash on his forehead and his shirt splashed with blood Lisanna just knows is not his own.

"Idiot!" she almost shouts, because Sting's too young to be a murderer, but instead she cradles his small and shaking body against her chest as she mumbles "it's all right" into his hair.  
>Because if Lisanna has a talent for something, it's not handling a gun with finesse or climbing in the masts with grace, no. Lisanna's talent is the ability to comfort someone in all weathers and all moods. And yeah, it's not easy to console a fourteen year old boy who just killed someone, even for Lisanna, but she actually does it. And when Sting stands up again, rubbing his eyes and swallowing thickly, she knows she succeeded.<p>

"Let's go help the others" Sting says, and his voice doesn't falter, and Lisanna knows he's grown up. And then Cobra shouts at them to stop slacking and to help him carry the massive amount of coffee.

.

Months pass, Oracion Seis loses about half of its crew in different raids and in fever, new members of course, members that joined after Lisanna and who she never got to know.  
>Sting stops sleeping in Lisanna's cot as there's many empty now, Sting also grows about three inches, and his voice cracks a lot. Something that Cobra often brings up, to Sting's embarrassment.<p>

Angel makes Lisanna sing with her in the rain, and they dance up in the roundhouse, with their skin golden after hours in the sun. Laughter mixing with the crashes of waves.

.

And then one day they reach Cape Town, and Angel gives Lisanna one of her red skirts, and together with Sting and Hoteye they leave the ship. Walking around in the jumble of small alleys and streets that doesn't lead anywhere. But luckily, Angel seems to know the place really well, as she navigates as Loke did the stars. They don't walk long before Hoteye disappears, Lisanna's not sure if Angel even notices. But she holds a bit tighter to Sting's shirt for safety.

And then Angel makes a sharp turn, and Sting stops, making Lisanna walk right into him. She scoffs before following her boss into a dark bar.

.

The bar is not big, and the only people sitting in it are almost fossils. Lisanna wonders why Angel choose this bar instead of another where people actually were in. And then she sees Angel walk to the bar and talk with the bartender, and then she disappears behind a door that slams shut. Lisanna and Sting just stand awkwardly before a man shouts at them "to come sit with him!"

Lisanna sits on the opposite side of the table, inspecting the man in front of her. He kinda looks like Master did, just a bit older and with more drinks in front of him that Lisanna knew anyone could handle without being Cana or dying.  
>"Hello" she says, a bit unsure of herself. And the man just... looks at her. And then;<p>

"Mira?" he asks, and Lisanna gasps loudly. Her hand unconsciously goes up to her shoulder where it _should _be a guild mark. "oh sorry" the old man continues, "I've must have said wrong, she's dead, after all, silly of me to forget"

And Lisanna almost wonders if Sting can hear her heart break.  
>"Mirajane Strauss?" she exclaims loudly, "dead?". A few men turns their heads but nothing more, and the old man downs his drink. He looks towards the bar to see if the bartender is still gone, and then he sighs deeply. "yeah, fine girl, Mirajane, sad to see her gone"<p>

In the background Lisanna can hear the door Angel used open, and someone angrily asks "where is he?", but she ignores it. Instead she looks at the man with her eyes almost the size of plates, "dead? how?" she shouts, and the old man winces as he clutches his head, as if the memories of Mirajane _(the golden girl, the fucking saint with the beautiful smile, with a broken heart)_

In the background Lisanna can hear the easily recognized sound of a bullet, she then feels something whiz by her cheek, but still she's only focusing on the man in front of her. "How?" she screams. And it's not like Lisanna to scream but her sister's dead, _dead__ dead dead_. Mirajane is fucking dead and Lisanna wants to scream so badly, so she does. And the man just looks at her with those sad eyes that hold too much sympathy, in them.

The old man just breathes one word before the bullet hits him in the head, "kraken"

* * *

><p>Oh god it took so long to make this chapter! My wi-fi hasn't been working.<p> 


	6. Wonder Woman in red

I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters.

Notes;

a) I've put the link to the photo in my profile. b) My wi-fi is okay again, hurray! c) The poem is called "If I should have a daughter" by Sarah Kay  
>d) Let's just say that comics was a big thing in Earthland<br>e) I'm really sorry that I haven't updated for a while, I've been really busy with school and other stuff.

* * *

><p>Lisanna can't move, her body's all stiff and her mouth is almost wide open. The man in front of her has also an open mouth, but he's dead. He's also lying over the table, a dark liquid Lisanna knows all to well lying in a pool around his head.<p>

Sting is trying to pry Lisanna away from the chair, but Lisanna can't even tell him to stop. One, traitorous tear is running down her cheek. And her face is all too hot and it's becoming so damn hard to breathe.

"Kraken" she chokes out, and Sting, in confusion, eases his grip on her shoulders, "_it _killed my sister!"

"what Lisan-" Sting asks, but Lisanna cuts him of by suddenly standing up. "My sister!" she screams. And Sting can swear that he sees something pon her back, beneath her shirt, move. It looks a bit sharper than her shoulder-blades and he narrows his eyes, but then Lisanna trips on her way past him. And he sees her fall, slowly, almost in slow-motion.  
>Lisanna hits the floor hard, face first of course, and lets out a loud groan. Sting is there in a moment, ready to help her up. He almost reminds Lisanna of a dog.<p>

Lisanna tries to get up, but then she sees Sting's face beginning to blur. And then the whole world turns black.

.

Lisanna is laying on a bed, she don't know who's. But it's a bed, and god, how long was it since she slept in a real bed? It must have been when she visited Dan's home.  
>Dan. She wonders how he is sometimes, when she's trying to sleep but her brain is still trying to mess with her. Is he mad at her, or has he already forgotten the months and the storms and when someone in the crew gave in to the fever. has he forgotten all the times he had to save his small friend from falling over board, or every time Lisanna helped him out of a fight?<p>

Lisanna feels like crying, like she hasn't cried enough in the last months. As if she hasn't emptied out all of her tears over the nights when clouds covered the stars, or when the rain didn't fall even though they danced for hours, or when a man died with glassy eyes and hair wet of sweat. And when Angel didn't come out from her cabin for days, and Lisanna fell asleep outside the thick door and hoped for a miracle.

Once, when Lisanna still was a small girl. She promised she would be like Hamlet, and that if she went down. She would take the world with her.  
><em>(In the end, Lisanna went down in silence, alone in a forest with a smile on her lips, so maybe she's Ophelia, after all. Crazy and in search after the birds.)<em>

Lisanna almost falls asleep again, but then there's a low knock on the door, and then Angel's worried voice reaches her ears. "Lisanna, are you all right?"

Lisanna opens her eyes and sees Angel, with her once long hair cropped off and clad in a thin nightgown. She looks so small and fragileit almost hurts in Lisanna's mind. That her once so strong captain is falling down beside her.

"Yeah," Lisanna whispers back, and Angel takes three steps against the bed "I'm all right"  
><em>(Lisanna falls asleep with Angel's body pressed against her, their breaths syncing together into a slow symphony, and Lisanna wonders if they're maybe not so different as she has always thought)<em>

_._

The next day Angel announces that they're staying in Cape Town for a short while, and that both Sting and Lisanna should go shopping while she and Cobra looks over some things.

So Lisanna and Sting walks hand in hand trough the streets, and Lisanna's eyes may still be red and bloodshot after crying into Angel's hair the whole night, and Sting's hand might be trembling in fear of seeing Lisanna black out like that again. But they both clenches their teeth and silently walks. Sometimes they stop and looks at something in a shop, but they don't buy anything in the end.

When the weather becomes cooler and Lisanna puts her arms around her so she won't freeze they reach a small pier where the only boats left in the dark water is old and forgotten. They sit down on one of the old warfs, with their foots dangling in the lukewarm water. Lisanna can't help but think about the last day in London and how Coco had whistled sad melodies when they waited for the night to come.

"Who was the man?" suddenly asks Sting, and Lisanna suddenly remembers that he's there and that he knows nothing about her and she's alone _alone alone._

She shrugs. Because how can she just say _"he was my guild master when I lived in another universe and still could turn into an animal in the blink of an eye"_ without sounding weird?

"Who. Was. He?" Sting repeats, and his voice has the same cold edge that Lisanna has only heard once before and that was when a man grabbed him and tried to sell him a pair of antique earrings to "his lady".

Lisanna turns to answer him, and she sees his dark eyes. With no trace of the coldness from before and they look so alive. And she suddenly feels so angry and lonely and she wonders if this is the way she will live her life from now on. As the empty shell she so often feels like she is, with ugly dead eyes that has since long stopped sparkling and with a tired smile that doesn't light up her face the way Sting's smile does.

Lisanna doesn't answer him. She just looks at him until it hurts and then she puts her head in her hands and lets the stupid tears out. Sobbing waves raking her body.

.

Once, Lisanna heard a poem. It was on a rainy day when she was around ten and Levy had dragged her and Cana to a small café in Magnolia where a pretty woman with dark curly hair had stood up and with her clear voice had told the audience what she would do and tell her daughter if she ever had one. And of course Lisanna can't remember much of what the woman had said that rainy day, but there was always a short part that was stuck in her mind;

_"And she's going to learn, that this life will hit you. Hard. In the face. Wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach.  
>But getting the wind knocked out of you, is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.<br>There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by band aids or poetry. So the first time she learns that Wonder Woman is not coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself."_

And yeah, Lisanna knows that in this word. The cape would probably had fallen off her shoulders before she could hand it to someone else. And that no, life doesn't wait for you to get back up. Instead it just steps on your rips and waits for you to die from lack of oxygen.

But sometimes, Lisanna lets herself hope a little bit. Because if Makarov was here, and Mirajane had also been in this world. Who else from Fairy Tail could have gotten to this weird universe. Who was still alive and well.

Maybe Elfman is still alive, breathing and laughing and _alive_. Because that's all that matters here, Lisanna can live all alone and so on, but the others has to be alive.

But in the end, Lisanna never learned to believe in miracles.

.

"Once," Lisanna begins, after almost ten minutes of thinking about red capes and breathing brothers and being punched by life and dying and being alive, "I had a sister."  
>Sting "hmm's" but doesn't say anything else, and Lisanna swallows thickly before continuing.<p>

"She was like Wonder Woman and Black Widow and Power girl gathered in the same person." and Lisanna finds herself rambling about a radiant person, late at night in a forgotten wharf with a boy at least five years her junior, wihtout thinking about how confused Sting must be as comics hasn't been invented yet.  
>"She was like a star, but she never burned out like the others do, because every time life hit her square in the face she responded with an uppercut. And every time fate pushed her down to the ground she came up with a leap and a war cry. She never cried, and if she did, she did it with a hopeful smile as she always believed in God."<p>

It's silent for a long time, the only thing Lisanna can hear is her shaky breaths and the water splashing against the wharf.

"Was she beautiful?" Sting asks, and Lisanna smiles timidly at her feet. Because, yeah, Mirajane Strauss was beautiful. With her pure white hair and her deep blue eyes that reminded her of oceans. "yeah," she sighs, "she was really beautiful"

.

"What the fuck is that?" Angel asks with a loud voice as Sting and Lisanna enters the small room that they are staying in, and Sting smirks at Lisanna and gives her a meaning gaze that could mean "You do the talking" and Lisanna answers with a elbow in his side.  
>"It's a dress" Lisanna says casually, as she puts down the heavy monster of a dress.<p>

"Yeah, I can see that" Angel responds coldly, and by her tone Lisanna knows that she is not impressed. "But I don't get the point of it"

"it's for Mirabelle" As she says that Lisanna shrugs, as if she just hasn't bought a really expensive dress for a galleon figure.

"Mirabelle?" Cobra's head shows up from under one of the thick blankets on his bed, what he was doing in bed as early as it is Lisanna has no clue. "Did you ignore the facts that one; we can't let Mirabelle wear a red dress because we won't look scary that way, and two; the dress will be ruined after only weeks on the sea." he says with a important sounding voice. And Lisanna rolls her eyes. "Don't be so boring, she would probably look good in red"

"Did you actually buy the things I told you to?" Angel suddenly asks, and Lisanna shoves a big sack filled with different boots and coats and a green hat that she gives to Cobra.

"Skirts?" Angel sceptically says as she gets the blue fabric in her hands. And Lisanna just laughs at her, and yeah. He laugh is still just a hollow sound without joy, but she fucking laughs.

.

The next day they return to the sea, Lisanna can't be happier. And Mirabelle actually looks good in red, and even though some of the men laughs at Sting clumsily nailing the fabric into the old wood, Angel actually looks pretty satisfied in the end.

"Look, she's the woman in red" She chuckles as she takes Lisanna's hand and holds it firmly. Lisanna blushes scarlet, but squeeses Angel's softer hand back.

* * *

><p>Wow, I actually got this chapter up! WOHOOO.<p> 


	7. Big smile, small smile

**I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters.**

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><p>a) merry cHRISTMAS! b) So sorry that I haven't updated in a while.<p>

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><p>It's almost winter again when Lisanna realizes that she's in love. With her captain. Her female captain.<p>

"Shit" she mutters as she looks at the deck where Sting and Angel are talking vividly about something that Lisanna doesn't understand at all. She studies the girl she's fallen in love with, the high cheekbones and the pink lips, the pale skin on her neck that shows dozens of small blue veins crossing over the skin. Angel is wearing her skirt again, and the fabric reaches her ankles. Lisanna doesn't wear her skirt as often as her captain does, as the skirt slows her down when she scrubs the deck and climbs in the sails.

Lisanna stares at the two young people so deeply encrossed in conversation that they seem to have shut the rest of the world out, and she thinks that they would probably be a better pair than her and Angel.

And then Angel turns her head and stares straight at Lisanna, chocolate brown eyes meeting sea blue, and Lisanna feels as if the air has been pressed out of her lungs. And then smiles Angel, and Lisanna falls just a bit more in love.

"Shit"

...

"I think we should attack"

"But we're at least twenty crew-members less than them"

"We can beat them, don't forget that we're pirates. Lisanna"

...

then the world goes under, and Lisanna swears that the gods are laughing at the flames

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><p>yeah I know it's short, but I needed to get this chapter up.<p> 


	8. Fishtail and chicken soup

**I don't own Fairy Tail nor its characters**

**a) Happy New Year! b)DO NOT WRAP BANDAGES OVER YOUR CHEST IF YOU HAVE BROKEN RIBS!**

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><p>Everyone has an expire date, one day when their eyes go dull and their skin cold. Everyone knows about it, that they're steadily walking towards their own end. And that's okay, because it happens to everyone. And just as sure that a party has a beginning, it has it's end.<p>

Lisanna knows all that, that she's just a human and that some day she will be put in a coffin so her body can molder in peace. But she still feels a bit shocked as she sees the cannonball coming closer and she just knows that she's going to die.

She has read in countless books how the world should just slow down and how life should flash in front of her eyes and how she will feel _peaceful_ in her last moment.  
>Yet another lie coming from literature she now knows is bullshit.<p>

Her heartbeat is doubling it's pace, her breathing doing the same. The cannonball comes closer and no, Lisanna doesn't feel peaceful. She feels rebellious and sad and angry and still fucking in love with a woman she should not dream of the way she does.

And then the cannonball hits her, with thousands of small splinters of wood accompanying her towards the black water that Lisanna _just knows _is going to be ice cold and that the collision is going to feel just like that one time she fell down a couple of stairs when she was seven.

...

It does, just a bit worse. Thousands of ice-cold needles pressing into her, a part of her head is throbbing after one of the bigger splinters hit her and she can swear that at least two of her ribs are broken after the hit of the cannonball.

...

She can't breathe, but she still opens her mouth in a idiotic attempt to get oxygen into her lungs, instead she just swallows a sea of salt water.  
>She's to tired to do something about it, just closes her mouth again.<p>

...

_It hurts. It hurts. It hurts._

...

And then she can breathe, but she's still in the water. And fuck, she's dead now. Right?

...

But if she's dead. Shouldn't the pain disappear? Or maybe God wanted her to suffer even in death, damn homophobe.

...

And then she slows down, and stops sinking farther down in the sea that Lisanna has learned to love like she once loved her magic. And a lot of the pain disappears, her head stops throbbing and the pain in her ears also vanishes. Her side, that was hit by the cannonball, still twinged, but the pain was slightly better now.  
>It seemed like she was actually dead, maybe she was in that "heaven" that Angel and Sting often talked about, or maybe she was in "hell". it didn't really matter, the pain was gone, and maybe she'll soon be reunited with her parents that she hasn't seen in over ten years. Maybe everything will be okay.<p>

And then Lisanna opens her eyes, nervous to see her new "home". But instead of a nice and cozy afterlife she sees the dark green water and small fishes and in her hand is a small piece of seagrass. And she's so far down that the surface is just a small spot of light somewhere over her.

It's freezing cold, but at least she's still alive, and breathing. Breathing?  
>Lisanna touches her neck and face, and yes, there's gills there. Which is really scary. And then she looks down on her legs. Because this has happened before, not just this way, and it was when she still had her magic.<br>...

Her legs are gone now, and instead there's a long, purple tail that she knows her sister would tell her clashes terrible with her grey shirt. And with her new tail she slowly moves upwards. Towards the surface.

It takes a long time, and her legs becomes tired rather quickly, her breaths are forced and one hand is on the open wound on her forehead, trying to stop the blood. The other hand still holding onto the small piece of seagrass she has no idea of where she got it from. Her ribs hurts like hell, and she tries to not move the upper side of her body too much. Which is really hard.  
>The patch of sunlight that shines trough the water becomes bigger as she continues kicking herself upwards, painfully slow. Lisanna thinks.<p>

And then she breaks the surface, her eyes sees the sun for the first time in hours. And she can't fucking breath again. Instead she chokes on the air in the same fashion fishes do when you put them on land.

She tries to remember how it was to "turn off" a transformation, but it's been more than three years and the details are becoming blurry. But she lets herself sink down under the surface again and closes her eyes, slowly counting to ten, and imagines herself without her gills. Because it doesn't hurt to try.

...

It works, and Lisanna takes her first shaky breath. Her gills are still there, on her jaw, her tail too. But she ignores them. It's not like she has the energy to care about them.  
>All around her floats parts of Oracion Seis and the other ship that was to strong for them. Lisanna grabs one of the bigger ones and crawls up on it. She lies there on her back, staring up on the blue sky, her fishtail laying limply in the water. And just <em>breathes, <em>breathe in breathe out, that's what the yoga teacher at the gym in Magnolia said. Breathe with your stomach, and your big toe if it's easier.

Her ribs twinges when she twist her stomach a bit to get more comfortable, which makes her moment of peace much more painful than before. And she groans loudly, just as her headache makes a grand entry.

With slow moves she sits up, and takes of her shirt. It's probably a really bad thing for her skin as the sun's unforgiving rays attacks the pale surface at once, but she rips of one of the sleeves and wraps it tightly over her forehead. She puts on the other sleeve too so it won't bleed trough.  
>The salt stings in the gash but she grits her teeth and rips the rest of the shirt to slices so she can wrap it around her chest, over her ribs. She wraps it hard, harder than when she was hiding her identity as a woman, and yes, she knows it's really bad for her but it if helps her get to land then of course she's going to wrap as hard as she can.<p>

She lies down on the piece of wood again for a pair of minutes, catching her breath and trying to remember where land was. This morning they had the sun in front of them, and a small city behind. Now the sun is almost in the center of the sky, and Lisanna guesses it's about half past one in the afternoon.  
>She jumps down into the water, so only her upper body lies on the wood. And then she begins to kick her way with her fishtail towards the sunset. Which is a bit cliché. But who cares?<p>

...

It turns out that Lisanna wasn't so far from land as she thought, she believed she would have to swim at least two miles, when it actually wasn't more than two kilometers. She just has a bad eye-sight.  
>Still, it's tiring and it takes a long time for Lisanna, and she paddles slowly and takes pauses at least five times per minute.<p>

The sun's been gone for a long time when she paddles into a small inlet, she's tired and hungry and her tongue feels like a stack of sandpaper in her mouth. She doesn't even remember just when her tail disappeared so she had to continue her trip while kicking with her weak and tired legs. _("don't trust your magic to much, little Lis, it can backfire whenever you lose control" as her master once said)_

...

She feels like cheering a bit when the piece of wood she lies on can't get any closer to the sand as it's to shallow, but she only manages to clumsily stand up and take a few steps. And then she collapses on the warm sand, gulping down air as if she's just ran a marathon instead of taking four steps.

Before she succumbs to the darkness, Lisanna remembers the fabric over her ribs. So after turning over so she lies on her back instead of her stomach, she begins to tug on the dirty "bandages", and when she feels the pressure on her chest ease she lets her head fall back on the sand and closes her eyes.

For the first time in what seems to be forever, sleep comes easily to Lisanna.

...

After what only seems like a few minutes of rest, Lisanna gets woken up by a lovely smell—chicken soup. Her eyes open and she almost shoots up from the soft bed she lies on, but a sharp pain in her ribs stops her. She groans loudly as she falls back on the mattress. And that's when she realizes that she's in a gigantic bedroom with great view of the sea.

"Wha—" she says before a polite cough cuts her off, and she turns her head so fast she hears one of the joints in her neck creak. By her bedside sits a young man with midnight black hair and dark eyes, he wears the clothes of a butler.

"I see that you are awake now, miss—" He asks with a melodic voice, Lisanna looks up at him, trying to understand what he actually said, even though she's not really trying. Instead she studies his face, he looks a bit familiar, as if she's seen him before. Then they lock eyes, midnight blue with raven dark. And the question—and answer—clicks into her brain."Oh right!" she exclaims as she goes all red, "my name's Lisanna, Lisanna Strauss!"

The young man lifts a thin eyebrow, "you sure about that?" he asks with a skeptic voice. And Lisanna feels her body going cold, what if there already was a Lisanna Strauss in this universe that had done something really bad, or if she was dead?

"Yes" she says and tries to make it sound like she's sure of herself, but it sounds more like a question. The man doesn't look like he believes her, but he doesn't comment on it. "Do you need help with eating or can you do it yourself?" he asks instead, and Lisanna shakes her head and tries to sit up again. This time more carefully.

"Thanks" she mutters when the man hands her the bowl, before taking her first sip. Over the edge of the porcelain, decorated with small flowers, she looks up at him again, and she sees that his stare is fixated on the place on her jaw where her gills should be. She resist the urge to cover the gills that the young man can see, he would probably see it as an invitation to ask her about them.

When the man stands up and begins to leave the room, Lisanna quietly whispers "thanks", she's sure it was to quiet for him to hear, but he stops in the doorway and almost looks back at her. But then he continues walking, closing the door after him.

...

After she finishes the soup she lays down on the bed again, looking up at the ceiling. There's drawings of four angels up there, women with blonde hair and thin bodies, bowing in front of a man with angry eyes. The angels are beautiful, but Lisanna has already met a woman they would never stand a chance against. She had hair white as snow and eyes like ebony, the woman who made young sailors shake when they heard her name and who would never bow in front of a man even if her life depended on it.

Her name was Sorano, and Lisanna has never loved someone as much as she loves her.

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><p>Wow I actually made another chapter, hurray!<p> 


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